Ode to Baseball
It’s late September and I’m already lamenting the long drought ahead. One hundred and sixty-two games, some stretching past midnight into extra innings, will come to an end one week from Sunday. Season over. Sure, there are the playoffs, the intensity, joy for the victors, made all the more interesting if your team is in the hunt, but it’s the regular season that I will miss the most, that long, dependable constant that marks the beginning of spring and stretches until the last days of summer.
What makes baseball so great? It’s not the peanuts and Cracker Jacks, although that’s part of it. Tradition, to be sure. Fans dressed up in get-ups I would never dream of wearing. Entertaining. Broadcasters who’ve been calling the game for decades, able to dish out baseball history from memory. I have my personal favorites. Rookies and old-timers breaking records. Inspiring. But it’s still more than that. What a lot of people dislike about baseball is what I love the most. It’s long. Interminable. No clock. No timers. Just the natural flow of a game being played, the same game that is played in sandlots and makeshift fields all over the world.
Quite simply, baseball is a friend. It keeps me company while I cook, clean, and create. Thanks to mobile technology, I can take games with me from room to room, or out to the garden and garage. If my attention wanders, the smack of the bat or the sudden urgency in the announcer’s voice beckons me to watch, and the endless replays guarantee I won’t miss a thing (plus the ability to rewind live TV). Generally, I can make dinner in two innings and clean up in one. Vacuuming is for commercials, or if I’m being really honest, my husband’s job. It took me two entire games to reupholster my eight dining room chairs, mostly due to an onslaught of pesky machine-driven staples along every inch of the seats’ perimeters. How unnecessary! What other sport can you turn on at 1:00 pm and find yourself still in its company late in the afternoon. By then I’ve sorted through photos, listened on the radio as I ran errands, and caught the final innings on a treadmill at the gym.
I realize that mourning the end of the season before it’s over is a bit like anticipating the day after your birthday. Heck, why not enjoy every moment while you have it. But the nostalgia sets in every September, like the end of summer when you say goodbye to all your “vacation” friends, or even the last weeks of school when your classmates go their separate ways. It’s a goodbye, maybe made harder because baseball season is so long.
I know that other sports fans have similar feelings. There are the post-football season blues, the NBA Finals aftermath funk. Many counter this by following multiple sports. There’s always something on ESPN, right? But even though I might find myself mildly interested in other competitions, nothing replaces the routine of coming home, tuning in, catching the line ups and settling in for the stretch.
One big difference between baseball and other sports is the sound, or lack there-of. Basketball squeaks, incessantly. Football is a crowd noise conundrum—how can you enjoy a game when you can’t even hear the announcers? Soccer is even worse. And gooooooaaaaaal only sounds good on paper. Golf is too quiet. If everyone insists on whispering, how will I know when to look up from my chores to see if anything has happened? Hockey. Too fast. Tennis. Too hard on my neck. No, baseball is my game.
I have to confess, I didn’t love baseball when I was a kid. In fact, my father hated the sound of baseball on TV or the radio so much that he forbade it from being broadcast anywhere in or near our home. But it’s not rebellion that drove me to be a fan. It was Wes. Then Stephanie. Then William. Watching kids play Little League was magical, an awakening that opened the floodgates. Afternoons gathered on metal bleachers, a community brought together, kids battling nerves in front of a small crowd, junk food at the snack shack, contented dogs. It was peaceful, comforting, the fields a home away from home.
My kids are long past little league now, but I’m not. Every year I tune in for the Little League World Series in August, abandoning the majors in favor of watching 11 to 13-year-olds play on the largest stage of their young lives. I would love to go to Williamsport, PA, some day, slide down the famous grass hill on remnants of a cardboard box, sit close enough to hear the disparate languages of the teams from around the world, meet the families and hear their stories.
I know of no other sport that has this youth equivalent. There’s no televised Pop Warner Super Bowl, AYSO World Cup, youth basketball Final Four, or PGA Junior Series. Only baseball gives kids a global audience to perform in front of, and not just for one game. This is a 3-week-long television event with coverage of more than 50 games on major sporting networks leading up to the US and International Championships, and culminating in a true World Series (unlike Major League Baseball, which is really a national championship). Sorry, pros, but it’s true. One team from Canada does not qualify as “world.”
But at this time of year it’s the pros that will go off the air, my reliable companion on sabbatical. I’m tempted to expand my cable offerings in search of minor leagues games, but then too much of a good thing could get weary. Besides, there are the holidays, good reads, and plenty of writing I should be doing. Pretty soon we will celebrate the new year, the best part of which means spring training is just two months away.
In a recent moment of pure self-indulgence, I asked my husband if he knew what to do if I found myself in a vegetative state? Understandably, his reaction was silence. Turn on a baseball game to keep me company, I told him, and let me fall asleep to the hum of the crowd, moments of laughter, the organist stirring up chants, and the occasional roar of the fans as the announcer calls, “…This. One. Is. OUTTA HERE.”